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states and the US. Not coincidentally, Putin greatly strengthened his political
friendship with Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac in February 2003 when the
trio met and harshly criticized the Bush administration on its policy on Iraq.40 Putin
also cultivated a strong personal friendship (and significantly increased natural gas
shipment to Italy) with Italy s Silvio Berlusconi, who reciprocated by defending the
Russian government s prosecution of Yukos CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the
basis that the Russian leader was a very good legal expert. 41 Most significantly,
Putin was particularly careful in cultivating a friendship with Chirac. The Russian
leader sought to give the French president the maximum credit for the February
2003 joint statement on Iraq. Putin declared that this kind of agreement could only
happen in France, that historic credit should go to Chirac, and that the document
was the first building block in the construction of the very same multipolar world
of which I spoke. 42
Yet, despite these attempts at engagement, Russia has not been nearly as
successful as it had hoped in using its relations with key West European states to
further its goals of containment. True, there has been considerable friction between
some of the West European states and the new members in Eastern Europe. France
and Poland in particular have had poor relations, made all the more difficult
by the condescending rhetoric of the former French president43 toward Poland.
Nevertheless, Russia has not been able to take full advantage of such fissures.
For example, although France did not rush to support the Orange Revolution in
Ukraine, it did not try to impede the mission of then Polish president Kwasniewski
and of the European foreign policy chief, Javier Solana that helped mediate new
elections and enabled the victory of Viktor Yushchenko.44 Russia s relative
ineffectiveness was also evident in its quest to stop West European criticism of
its actions in Chechnya. Though, in 2005, French foreign minister Michel Barnier
softened France s rhetoric when he spoke of a Chechen crisis rather than of a
Chechen war, as his predecessor Dominique de Villepin had, the French govern-
ment remained quite critical of Russia s actions, and the French press has continued
to be relentless in condemning Russia s actions.45
Fifth, there remain serious questions as to the wisdom and viability of Russian
attempts to use West European states to contain or counterbalance the US. There
Enlargement and the perils of containment 61
is in fact a problem with any attempt by Russia to substitute Western Europe
for the US, even if the intention is just to contain the latter. At least for the near
future, Russia has to deal with the US as the sole superpower and the only entity
that has a truly global reach. As an influential Russian analyst has argued, even
though Russia might highlight relations with Europe or China, whether we like
it or not, our possibilities in the rest of the world are largely determined by our
relations with the United States. 46 Moreover, even if Russia had been able to build
a strong Russian, French and German axis (and this was, at best, unlikely, given
the diversity of interests that each of the last two have always had), it is doubtful
that the trio would have carried sufficient international weight to counterbalance
the US. Further, the defeat of the referendum on the EU constitution in France and
the November 2005 riots in Paris and other cities have tremendously weakened the
political power and credibility of President Chirac. In addition, the election of a
strongly pro-American president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2007 promises to re-balance
relations between Paris and the anti-American elites and Washington.
As well, the 2005 elections in Germany resulted in the defeat of Schroeder s
Social Democrats and brought to power a Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who places
less emphasis on relations with Paris and Moscow, and wants to improve ties with
the US. Although she leads a coalition government with the Social Democrats, and
this might limit her options, Chancellor Merkel has made it clear that she views
Europe as a partner, not a counterweight, to the US.47 Therefore, at the very least,
the vaunted moteur franco-allemand, which supposedly led Europe, and which
Russia tried so hard to influence, is, if not dead, rapidly running out of gas.
Putin, of course, has never given up on influencing the US directly, despite his
various efforts at containment, but his success here has also been limited. There
has been productive cooperation in the fight against terrorism between Russia and
the US, and Putin has good personal relations with George W. Bush. Even after the
friction over the American proposal for the deployment of components of an anti-
ballistic missile system (ABM) in Poland and the Czech Republic, Bush invited
the Russian leader to his family s vacation compound in Kennebunkport, Maine
in 2007, in an attempt to warm up relations.48 Despite this honour, Putin refused to
support an East European ABM deployment, instead offering a joint development
with NATO that would be deployed on the territory of the former Soviet Union49
and Moscow did not reverse its decision to pull out of the Conventional Forces in
Europe (CFE) treaty (which it had made in retaliation for the American proposed
deployment.50
Such personal relations moreover, have not prevented the US from pushing
strongly for the continued enlargement of the Alliance, from harshly criticizing
Russian relations with Iran,51 from continuing its military actions in Iraq, or from
trying to ensure its primacy in NATO. Further, despite professions of friendship,
US discursive practices in dealing with Russia show considerable insensitivity, and
Putin s counterattacks have not made matters better. Following the February 2005
meeting with Putin in Bratislava, President Bush was bluntly patronizing when he
demanded that the Russian government must renew a commitment to democracy
and the rule of law. 52 In June 2007 Bush, just prior to meeting Putin in Germany,
62 A. Braun
asserted that promised Russian domestic reforms have been derailed. 53 Little
wonder that Russia has emphasized its other efforts at containment.
Eastern European attempts at containment
Russia, though, is not the only state that is trying its hand at containment. It
would be hard for any group of countries to just easily transcend several decades
of history, but given the legacy of Soviet rule and hegemony in Eastern Europe,
it would be especially difficult for the latter to overcome old fears and lingering
bitterness. Matters have not been made easier by the fact that, as noted, Russia
has not only refused to atone for Soviet misdeeds, but all too often, has failed to
even acknowledge them. Combine this with a slow and often uncertain transition
to democracy in Russia, and it is little wonder that the former communist states in
Eastern Europe have been eager to join NATO and gain its protection.
The Alliance, however, has evolved. It has increasingly emphasized its political
dimensions, it has created a larger area of ambiguity between collective defence
and collective security, and, as an organization, has stressed that it no longer views
Russia as a threat. Consequently, the Cold War idea of containment, specifically
directed at the Soviet Union/Russia seems anachronistic, particularly in Paris and
Berlin. The latter, though, is not necessarily the view in Warsaw, Riga or Vilnius.
True, the new members of NATO have officially and frequently proclaimed that
they do not see Russia as a threat. Yet, even though there is not a homogeneity of
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